Keith wrote:
On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 05:07:29 GMT, "Phil Kane"
wrote:


As I said, I don't know the whole story nor at which office it
happened.


He was caught by the FCC sending false distress signals on 156.8 and another
marine frequency from his backyard. I wish they would just start throwing these
morons in front of a jury. I don't think a jury will have much sympathy for the
f*cking idiots.

Absolutely, idiots who do something like this obviously lack the
ability to think of the consequences of such stupidly. Some years
ago I was involved with an SOS on 15 meters. The station sending
the distress call claimed to be in a boat with several people on
board and was sinking. The signal was weak and the station was
sending pretty crappy hard to copy CW and repeated request for his
location resulted in uncopyable CW. Stations, using their beam
antennas, determined it was coming from somewhere in the
northwest. The Coast Guard got into the act and came up on the
frequency and before it was all over there was a Canadian Coast
Guard cutter and a U.S. Coast Guard aircraft on the way to search
off the Washington/Oregon coast. They searched all night and the
next day I received a phone call from the Coast Guard that they
decided it must be a hoax.
Too bad it could not have been determined who the idiot was, he
should still be in prison.